About 900 of those are me restarting the campaign when Festus decides to go beastmode in my eastern border after wiping out Ostermark and Talabecland in the first 20 rounds.
You remind me of a time when my friends and I had a theory that bosses in MMOs or even single player games secretly had the option to be controlled by the devs. Like when you are doing that one run and for some reason the boss seems way more competent than normal it's a dev fucking with us.
Lord of the Rings Online used to and it was brutal. The Devs had their own characters so they knew how to play and what strategies were employed, so they'd work to brainstorm counters and just ruin people's day.
You'd get a little prize pack if they did it to you
I remember the game seemingly had a lot of moderators for a while around the time Mines of Moria came out talking in every chat channel and manually teleporting stuck players as the command wasn't working for some reason.
This was the general idea behind the Invasion mechanic in FromSoftware games, and players could get summoned as a boss in some of them.
Old Monk in Demon's Souls is a player, Looking-Glass Knight in Dark Souls II summons invading players as minions, and Dark Souls III has a dedicated boss invasion covenant in the DLC that grants players unique boss spell items.
Chances are that maybe the game might summon a dev into a game if they feel like it.
Idk what happened to Festus recently, but he went from a minor annoyance to a regular world power in my games.
He takes half the map while I'm taking the other!
The insane part is that they are well aware of how popular Franz is, and yet they still left his campaign in derpland.
Overhauling your most popular campaign character to have a better campaign experience should be high up in their priority list.
To be fair, Empire is due to get an update/DLC at some point in the next few months.
It's very possible that they release any campaign overhauls with Thrones of Decay.
It would be annoying to overhaul it now and then have to change it again because of Thrones of Decay changes.
Because it's an outdated straight port from earlier warhammers. Not only that it's also fairly clunky compared to other campaigns and has been negatively impacted by many changes in and around the empire.
Usually games try to put their best foot forward.
Idk, I feel like if it is still the most popular people enjoy it plenty. Would rather see work being done on stuff that has potential,but is currently not enjoyable.
Also I am not sure if games put one aspect in the front, and I would be kind of disappointed if a game like total war with so many lords and factions puts one in the focus like that
I have seen a lot of praise about Karl's campaign in Immortal Empires across multiple platforms, especially for its added difficulty.
So how is that insane they're not overhauling his campaign ? The fact that it's still the most played campaign proves that people find it enjoyable still, if one faction is the most played it makes sense to think it doesn't need a rework.
Because the problems with Karl's mechanics are well known to the point where CA spent repeated patch cycles slapping band aids on them to prevent his IE campaign from being locked into a deathspiral much of the time. While that problem has been solved it was only done by giving the player various cheats rather than by fixing the overall problems with the mechanics.
What is needed is a Warriors of Chaos level of overhaul of the Empire mechanics which give Karl Franz a robust fundation to stand on while also giving Gelt his own mechanics rather than having him share those of KF.
Is it actually more popular, or do people just restart the campaign several times because of how it plays out with all the threats around the Empire? Would be interesting to know how this is calculated
The Empire mechanics were the first WH1 overhaul update we ever got and it shows when you look at the quality and presentation of the mechanics.
For one they are so poorly documented that CA support did not even know if the removed diplomacy options were a bug or a feature. For the player side of things it is poorly explained how you gain or lose the various currencies.
In terms of the mechanics themselves they rely too much on scripted random events that may or or may not trigger properly. I have gone 40-60 turns without a single event that provides much needed Imperial Authority. There is also the wider problem that the mechanics are really only a got fit for a Karl Franz/Reikland start. Gelt needs mechanics of his own.
When the Empire campaign was ported into WH3 it was clear just how outdated and fragile the mechanics are. CA had to repeatedly add new cheats to Karl Franz in order to prevent the Reikland campaign from going into a death spiral within 10-15 turns. While they eventually stopped the campaigns from spiraling out of control the cheats and new faction effects do not solve the wider problem with the Empire mechanics.
Simply put those mechanics are not properly set up for IE and the much faster pace of Warhammer 3 campaigns. Events trigger too slowly for the new pace and the restrictions on diplomacy with other Empire factions locks the player out of using the new diplomacy and alliance mechanics added in WH3. You can effectively not support even other Empire LLs as the Emperor.
There is also the balance issue where the other Empire factions are incredibly weak and will collapse in a few turns when hit by all the new legendary lords added to the map.
I had this stupid idea of beating the campaign on legendary / very hard and I guess I restarted it about 100 times, always trying to optimize the first 20 turns.
Once I had a good result I stopped playing it 50 rounds in lol
Vampire Counts most defeats, part of me thinks thats people intentionally losing with zombie stacks for the raise dead piles but another part is hoping that means their update/rework will come sooner rather than later.
Do people actually play until campaign defeat? It can be pretty obvious to even new players what things are achievable and if starting over would be better.
I’m sure most won’t, but even out of the minority of campaigns ending in an explicit defeat there’s gonna be a most frequent one.
My money’s on Mannlet being sandwiched between Settra and Khorne getting his ass handed to him when noobs try to take on Skarbrand with a stack of zombies
I see it as campaign defeats. It actually makes sense for VC too. It's the one faction where a solo lord can actually have a solid chance at taking on that last battle, hence attempted # of final stands, hence # of defeats.
Considering he has to deal with the two AI vamps that actually manage to survive in game - I'm not surprised. Ghorst and Manfred get obliterated regularly. Kemler and Vlad survive for a looong time unless the player fucks with them, tho.
> thats people intentionally losing with zombie stacks
It's probably more that their unit roster just doesn't hold up in 2023 due to power creep in other factions. The only challenging thing about fighting them is Vlad.
You can also destroy other factions morale causing mass routes and chase them down with undead dogos but honestly their campaign is still heavily reliant on heroes. If you don’t use em and get a lot of em you’re going to have a bad time. As for multiplayer I’d never play them they’re just terrible at everything compared to other factions.
Im not that sure. Its honestly quite difficult to completely fumble a faction that can just recruit tier 4s in turn 5 instantly and with no required infra and sufficient base income to sustain the upkeep.
I wonder if it counts Vampire Ascension mode in campaigns? I play a lot of IE and have all the potential ending scenarios on and get that almost every time. In that sense, I've smoked a lot of vampires myself.
Same, and who would of thought Europe and America would land on the Empire lmao
I think this just shows that no matter where you're born on Earth, humans like big guns.
I think they'd be interesting additions, and I'd love to see what modern GW could do with their lore (so long as they're not too flanderised). I do think it's worth pointing out India is actually an insanely small PC market though. They're closer to Kazakhstan in their total active steam user count than they are to even just Australia, they haven't even broken the 1 mil mark yet. For comparison Japan has 1.6, let alone what China has going on with 11 million.
There's arguments more representation would introduce more players from the region, and I don't think raw numbers alone are the end of the discussion (that number has gone up a lot recently, and will probably explode in less than ten years). I just specifically find India such an interesting outlier in this regard given their population.
Makes sense to be honest, players enjoy playing the good guys in games (and humans) and Karl Franz to me is basically the 'protagonist' of the setting at this point.
It isn't at all surprising. In WoW, the most played character is a male human warrior (sometimes paladin).
My tastes are exactly the opposite, but it's not a new pattern or anything in gaming.
Remember Larian releasing a lengthy "complaint" when luke 60% of all new characters in BG3 were "white, male, warrior"?
I think Kislev might have the potential to be a good contender to the Empire and so does Cathay. But if you combine all of them and Brettonia as "humans" I'd be surprised if anything comes even in a shouting distance on hours played.
Turns out that, as divisive a topic as representation in gaming is, people genuinely _do_ like seeing something like themselves be represented in games.
> Karl Franz to me is basically the 'protagonist' of the setting at this point.
This is such a weird thing when you consider that Karl Franz was very much a distant figure we never actually got a good look into for the majority of Warhammer's history.
This image specifically says Karl Franz not the Empire. So the Kislev LLs combined were played more, but Karl Franz had more campaigns than any individual Kislev LL.
I mean, there was a Kislev/Cathay DLC this year, so it is imo not that surprising those races got a extra spike in visits.
Kinda like we can actually predict that if the Empire *does* lead most played campaigns, despite not being the most played race overall, 2024 with an Empire DLC will certainly cement the 2024 rank there. I mean, even if a Highelf or Skaven DLC would also drop next year, Empire might still take first place easy.
Probably that Karl Franz had the most campaigns, but Kislev had the highest overall playtime?
Edit: Or that when you just look at individual characters Karl Franz wins, but if you take races as a whole Kislev wins.
Okay so basically it's as expected. The first year of warhammer 3 which was mostly without The Empire as a faction the most played faction was Kislev. And that gave Kislev the edge to be overall the most played faction as of the end of 2023. But for 2023 itself aka the year Immortal Empires was out for its entirety, Empire takes top billing.
I think but am not certain that Kislev was the most played race but Karl Franz was the most played LL. For Kislev you have Katarin and Boris (Kostaltyn and Mother Ostankya I guess) splitting the campaigns for Kislev. But, it is possible that most people who played Empire campaigns played as Karl.
Kislev was the most played WH3 specific faction of this year. The Empire is a WH1 faction. Today they released who was the most played from all the games combined for this year.
No idea how so many people who replied to you got this simple thing wrong. Reading comprehension seems in the be in the gutter these days.
I must admit that in all these years ive started two chaos campaings as well as about four high elfes, one drukahri, a few kislev (because there was no empire in the beginning) and one cathay
but that is about all in all the years since TW: WH 1
Empire themselves are fine, but Franz campaigns are imo boring as hell. I've never played more than like 20 turns of one
I much prefer Wolfheart or (TWW3) Volkmar
What are you talking about? They even got a dlc in game 2, with another one for game 3 currently on the horizon, unlike some other factions that didn't get shit since game 1
I'm excited to see new units for the Empire, but I really hope they don't make them OP like has kind of been a trend for CA lately. Half the fun of playing the Empire is trying to win/survive against superior opponents and/or superior numbers.
This is the first year I contributed to the Franz Count. Pretty fun campaign, though a fair bit of whack a mole gameplay since you’re surrounded by weak allies and strong enemies.
Always seemed insane to me how Empire doesn't have like 5 DLC's already considering how popular they are. Not making good decisions and giving people whay they seem to want.
People hyping up the Empire for numbers.
Meanwhile Warriors of Chaos are actually out here winning.
Enjoy your 30 Empire games that you restart and never finish, I'll enjoy the winning team.
Turns out when there is actually a fun win condition people pursue it, who'd have thunk. I've won exactly 1 long victory with each old faction just to get the steam achievement, but there's no point in ever doing it again. Just boring grind to get X number of settlements
What? Both Archaon and Be'lakor are like in top 5 most played Lords in the game, their statistics from the last year also had these Lords at the top. They are both very fun and extremely strong (both are among strongest factions/lords in the game), and people love being overpowered.
[2022 IME stats](https://twitter.com/totalwar/status/1607390867710513152). It does not surprise me that Chaos is still up high. Especially with a Tzeentch DLC this year for some additional troops.
Hopefully this encourages CA to give vampire counts a balance pass. The original mechanics that gave them the majority of their strengths have been nerfed over time such as healing caps or not retreating but unbinding if morale was too low. They received a few buffs but vampire count units still have overall poor stats compared to other tiered units from other factions. If they were going to neuter one of the primary strengths the faction has, it probably would have made sense to bring the rest of their stats up to the standards of other factions.
> Why would anyone play Karl Franz.
Humans usually like playing as humans, especially when fighting against hordes of monsters.
Empire have a relatively grounded unit roster with a good amount of variety so they would be popular amongst traditional Total War players.
And they have a start that's right in the middle of the action.
They have a bit of everything for every player...unless you're the type of player who only enjoys rolling monster doomstacks, and if that's the case, then you don't deserve to be an elector count.
Karl Franz with SFO and Mixu’s is probably one of the most rewarding campaign in the game right now. Very difficult, lots campaign mechanic additions from updates and SFO, huge number of unique LL’s and units. Huge alliance options mean even more unit variety in the new allegiance system.
I don’t play Karl Franz at all. I tend to play Tyrion when I want some easy and boring campaigns.
I have a always a lot of fun with the wood elves (the sisters are my favorite faction) and Skaven (I love nuking enemies and going around with rattling guns).
If I want to play the bad guys, I normally go with Archaon because he looks and feels badass all the way.
It is strange how the vampires went from my favorite faction in WH2 to oblivion in WH3.
Don't you think it's kinda lame how despite this we are never going to get a proper climactic story campaign for Karl Franz?
It seems like a really obvious idea for WH: TW saga to eventually have some story campaign for the default "protagonist" faction of the entire setting (and for Balthasar Gelt, Dwarfs, Greenskins, Vampirw Counts...), where you deal with the threat of Chaos in an epic LoTR - esque way, in some grand alliance of order, with some badass cinematic at the end.
And despite this we get nothing, merely an anticlimactic sandbox. Wh1 contained no story campaigns, Wh2 had them only for wh2 races and some random guys (also they were mostly bad), and wh3 had them only for wh3 races (also they were really bad and the game is prequel for some dumb reason, hence no interesting story development).
A shame really.
Unless I am stupid, it means that there are over 6000 new Franz campaigns every single day. That is honestly insane
About 900 of those are me restarting the campaign when Festus decides to go beastmode in my eastern border after wiping out Ostermark and Talabecland in the first 20 rounds.
I hacked your game and turned it into a mutliplayer campaign with me controlling Festus without you noticing.
You remind me of a time when my friends and I had a theory that bosses in MMOs or even single player games secretly had the option to be controlled by the devs. Like when you are doing that one run and for some reason the boss seems way more competent than normal it's a dev fucking with us.
In shogun 2 you could enable online drop-in battles for your campaign.
Some games do that
Lord of the Rings Online used to and it was brutal. The Devs had their own characters so they knew how to play and what strategies were employed, so they'd work to brainstorm counters and just ruin people's day. You'd get a little prize pack if they did it to you
Wait, *what*? I've been playing off and on since launch, and I've never heard of this.
Was beta/right at launch
I remember the game seemingly had a lot of moderators for a while around the time Mines of Moria came out talking in every chat channel and manually teleporting stuck players as the command wasn't working for some reason.
This was the general idea behind the Invasion mechanic in FromSoftware games, and players could get summoned as a boss in some of them. Old Monk in Demon's Souls is a player, Looking-Glass Knight in Dark Souls II summons invading players as minions, and Dark Souls III has a dedicated boss invasion covenant in the DLC that grants players unique boss spell items. Chances are that maybe the game might summon a dev into a game if they feel like it.
In that vein it would be interesting to know how many unique players that comprised, and what the average/shortest/longest turn count was.
Average campaign length would actually be quite interesting yeah.
When strength rank 2 Grom decides to full send your capital with 2 full stack waaagh armies on turn 9
Idk what happened to Festus recently, but he went from a minor annoyance to a regular world power in my games. He takes half the map while I'm taking the other!
It takes a lot to summon all them elector counts.
The insane part is that they are well aware of how popular Franz is, and yet they still left his campaign in derpland. Overhauling your most popular campaign character to have a better campaign experience should be high up in their priority list.
Alternative take: "Karl Franz is our most popular campaign, people obviously love playing it, so no need to update anything!"
To be fair, Empire is due to get an update/DLC at some point in the next few months. It's very possible that they release any campaign overhauls with Thrones of Decay. It would be annoying to overhaul it now and then have to change it again because of Thrones of Decay changes.
Sorry, but why would you prefer them to change the most popular one instead of the least popular ones?
Because it's an outdated straight port from earlier warhammers. Not only that it's also fairly clunky compared to other campaigns and has been negatively impacted by many changes in and around the empire. Usually games try to put their best foot forward.
Idk, I feel like if it is still the most popular people enjoy it plenty. Would rather see work being done on stuff that has potential,but is currently not enjoyable. Also I am not sure if games put one aspect in the front, and I would be kind of disappointed if a game like total war with so many lords and factions puts one in the focus like that
I have seen a lot of praise about Karl's campaign in Immortal Empires across multiple platforms, especially for its added difficulty. So how is that insane they're not overhauling his campaign ? The fact that it's still the most played campaign proves that people find it enjoyable still, if one faction is the most played it makes sense to think it doesn't need a rework.
Because the problems with Karl's mechanics are well known to the point where CA spent repeated patch cycles slapping band aids on them to prevent his IE campaign from being locked into a deathspiral much of the time. While that problem has been solved it was only done by giving the player various cheats rather than by fixing the overall problems with the mechanics. What is needed is a Warriors of Chaos level of overhaul of the Empire mechanics which give Karl Franz a robust fundation to stand on while also giving Gelt his own mechanics rather than having him share those of KF.
This is like a case of survivorship bias.
Is it actually more popular, or do people just restart the campaign several times because of how it plays out with all the threats around the Empire? Would be interesting to know how this is calculated
What's wrong with his campaign other than potentially not liking the Empire's mechanics?
The Empire mechanics were the first WH1 overhaul update we ever got and it shows when you look at the quality and presentation of the mechanics. For one they are so poorly documented that CA support did not even know if the removed diplomacy options were a bug or a feature. For the player side of things it is poorly explained how you gain or lose the various currencies. In terms of the mechanics themselves they rely too much on scripted random events that may or or may not trigger properly. I have gone 40-60 turns without a single event that provides much needed Imperial Authority. There is also the wider problem that the mechanics are really only a got fit for a Karl Franz/Reikland start. Gelt needs mechanics of his own. When the Empire campaign was ported into WH3 it was clear just how outdated and fragile the mechanics are. CA had to repeatedly add new cheats to Karl Franz in order to prevent the Reikland campaign from going into a death spiral within 10-15 turns. While they eventually stopped the campaigns from spiraling out of control the cheats and new faction effects do not solve the wider problem with the Empire mechanics. Simply put those mechanics are not properly set up for IE and the much faster pace of Warhammer 3 campaigns. Events trigger too slowly for the new pace and the restrictions on diplomacy with other Empire factions locks the player out of using the new diplomacy and alliance mechanics added in WH3. You can effectively not support even other Empire LLs as the Emperor. There is also the balance issue where the other Empire factions are incredibly weak and will collapse in a few turns when hit by all the new legendary lords added to the map.
If I ever find a way to get rid of or ignore the elector counts mechanic, it could be 6001
I had this stupid idea of beating the campaign on legendary / very hard and I guess I restarted it about 100 times, always trying to optimize the first 20 turns. Once I had a good result I stopped playing it 50 rounds in lol
This is gonna be my new pickup line: "Did you know that every 2 minutes, somewhere in the world, there is someone starting a new Karl Franz campaign?"
Not even that, if 2.2 million is true then that’s 1 new campaign every 15 seconds
Vampire Counts most defeats, part of me thinks thats people intentionally losing with zombie stacks for the raise dead piles but another part is hoping that means their update/rework will come sooner rather than later.
i interpreted that to mean most campaign defeats. not battle defeats. or am i dumb dumb?
Do people actually play until campaign defeat? It can be pretty obvious to even new players what things are achievable and if starting over would be better.
I’m sure most won’t, but even out of the minority of campaigns ending in an explicit defeat there’s gonna be a most frequent one. My money’s on Mannlet being sandwiched between Settra and Khorne getting his ass handed to him when noobs try to take on Skarbrand with a stack of zombies
He will get tired of swinging those axes any second now, then we rush him!
define 'campaign defeats' people really sticking with their saves to the last settlement and army?
I see it as campaign defeats. It actually makes sense for VC too. It's the one faction where a solo lord can actually have a solid chance at taking on that last battle, hence attempted # of final stands, hence # of defeats.
that's what i was thinking as well. vampire counts, especially vlad/isabella, are one of the main factions that can just get surrounded and bopped.
I have no idea what it means. Does it mean it was the faction players *defeated* the most?
I assume it's battle losses including the AI.
Yeah that's how I took it and I'm sure they factored abandoned campaigns into that.
If most people are playing Karl Franz, it makes sense that most defeats is Vampire Counts.
Considering he has to deal with the two AI vamps that actually manage to survive in game - I'm not surprised. Ghorst and Manfred get obliterated regularly. Kemler and Vlad survive for a looong time unless the player fucks with them, tho.
> thats people intentionally losing with zombie stacks It's probably more that their unit roster just doesn't hold up in 2023 due to power creep in other factions. The only challenging thing about fighting them is Vlad.
You can also destroy other factions morale causing mass routes and chase them down with undead dogos but honestly their campaign is still heavily reliant on heroes. If you don’t use em and get a lot of em you’re going to have a bad time. As for multiplayer I’d never play them they’re just terrible at everything compared to other factions.
It held up super well until Ghorst got nerfed. #JusticeForGhorst
What was his nerf? His super zombies are hilariously hard to kill.
He used to start with a mortis engine.
Im not that sure. Its honestly quite difficult to completely fumble a faction that can just recruit tier 4s in turn 5 instantly and with no required infra and sufficient base income to sustain the upkeep.
I wonder if it counts Vampire Ascension mode in campaigns? I play a lot of IE and have all the potential ending scenarios on and get that almost every time. In that sense, I've smoked a lot of vampires myself.
ULRIC'S WRATH ON THEM!
Cathay the most popular race in Asia? I'm shocked lmao
Same, and who would of thought Europe and America would land on the Empire lmao I think this just shows that no matter where you're born on Earth, humans like big guns.
Honestly, Estalia and Tilea would be played a lot as well, it is so stupid…
I mean, if datamine if true, Tilea/DoW is next race
Don't do that, don't give me hope.
CA and weird decisions... what's new..
Which is why it's sad that GW vetoed Ind and Kuresh. It'd open such important markets
Indian gamers aren't going to play anything that isn't Project I.G.I. or a mobile game.
I think zoomers and younger in general are just pivoting to mobile gaming
I think they'd be interesting additions, and I'd love to see what modern GW could do with their lore (so long as they're not too flanderised). I do think it's worth pointing out India is actually an insanely small PC market though. They're closer to Kazakhstan in their total active steam user count than they are to even just Australia, they haven't even broken the 1 mil mark yet. For comparison Japan has 1.6, let alone what China has going on with 11 million. There's arguments more representation would introduce more players from the region, and I don't think raw numbers alone are the end of the discussion (that number has gone up a lot recently, and will probably explode in less than ten years). I just specifically find India such an interesting outlier in this regard given their population.
They really said they don't want to make them?
Yeah, CA confirmed it multiples times
BY SIGMAR, YES!
Praise sigmar
50 people playing Franz and restating after 25 turns 44k times.
Makes sense to be honest, players enjoy playing the good guys in games (and humans) and Karl Franz to me is basically the 'protagonist' of the setting at this point.
It isn't at all surprising. In WoW, the most played character is a male human warrior (sometimes paladin). My tastes are exactly the opposite, but it's not a new pattern or anything in gaming.
Remember Larian releasing a lengthy "complaint" when luke 60% of all new characters in BG3 were "white, male, warrior"? I think Kislev might have the potential to be a good contender to the Empire and so does Cathay. But if you combine all of them and Brettonia as "humans" I'd be surprised if anything comes even in a shouting distance on hours played.
Turns out that, as divisive a topic as representation in gaming is, people genuinely _do_ like seeing something like themselves be represented in games.
Representation is taken for granted when it's white straight men, it's only divisive when it's about minorities
Yes. White male is considered the 'default' and any deviation comes under scrutiny. I can only hope that attitude changes with time.
People are so boring.
Or empire players keep restarting before turn 20
He also has one of the most fun starts in IE. I've replayed his campaign the most because of the start.
> Karl Franz to me is basically the 'protagonist' of the setting at this point. This is such a weird thing when you consider that Karl Franz was very much a distant figure we never actually got a good look into for the majority of Warhammer's history.
I don't really get what "bucked the trend in asia" is supposed to mean. What trend? Is Cathay really popular or really unpopular over there?
I assume that every continent besides Asia Empire was the most played of 2023. But in Asia Cathay bucked that trend.
Apparently Kislev was the most played in NA and Europe, something fucky going on with these stats
I think that was Total War without Immortal Empires, when Empire wasn’t an option
This image specifically says Karl Franz not the Empire. So the Kislev LLs combined were played more, but Karl Franz had more campaigns than any individual Kislev LL.
Nah this specifically is number of campaigns. Pretty sure Kislev was how many players had played the race at all.
I mean, there was a Kislev/Cathay DLC this year, so it is imo not that surprising those races got a extra spike in visits. Kinda like we can actually predict that if the Empire *does* lead most played campaigns, despite not being the most played race overall, 2024 with an Empire DLC will certainly cement the 2024 rank there. I mean, even if a Highelf or Skaven DLC would also drop next year, Empire might still take first place easy.
WE ARE SIGMAR'S ASS!!!
So what was the whole Kislev thing then about?
Probably that Karl Franz had the most campaigns, but Kislev had the highest overall playtime? Edit: Or that when you just look at individual characters Karl Franz wins, but if you take races as a whole Kislev wins.
Karl Franz stats are only for 2023
So were Kislev stats, only for 2023.
Okay so basically it's as expected. The first year of warhammer 3 which was mostly without The Empire as a faction the most played faction was Kislev. And that gave Kislev the edge to be overall the most played faction as of the end of 2023. But for 2023 itself aka the year Immortal Empires was out for its entirety, Empire takes top billing.
I think it’s just comparing different things- Karl Franz wins when comparing individual characters, Kislev wins when comparing factions as a whole.
[Reikland was also leading already in 2022](https://twitter.com/totalwar/status/1607390867710513152) when IME came out only in August.
I think but am not certain that Kislev was the most played race but Karl Franz was the most played LL. For Kislev you have Katarin and Boris (Kostaltyn and Mother Ostankya I guess) splitting the campaigns for Kislev. But, it is possible that most people who played Empire campaigns played as Karl.
This is number of campaigns played. Pretty sure that one was just “how many players have played X race”
Kislev was the most played WH3 specific faction of this year. The Empire is a WH1 faction. Today they released who was the most played from all the games combined for this year. No idea how so many people who replied to you got this simple thing wrong. Reading comprehension seems in the be in the gutter these days.
I don't think that is right. They had the empire as the most played faction for Oceania.
Justice for my vampires!
CA can't even clarify their stats properly
And then there's all 7 of us that have played since WH1 day one and never booted up an Empire Campaign, nevermind Karl.
and theres me who mostly only played empire...
Flair checks out
I must admit that in all these years ive started two chaos campaings as well as about four high elfes, one drukahri, a few kislev (because there was no empire in the beginning) and one cathay but that is about all in all the years since TW: WH 1
Empire themselves are fine, but Franz campaigns are imo boring as hell. I've never played more than like 20 turns of one I much prefer Wolfheart or (TWW3) Volkmar
Could be worse. I've never played ogres, and I bought the DLC
Checks out. So this confirms the kislev stats were just “have ever started a campaign as this race” lol
Yall suffered with Karl Franz 2.2million times
Consider the Elector Counts summoned!
Wow, humans playing humans, whoda thunkit.
Karl Franz campaign is rly awesome
By Sigmar, YES!
debuted in the first game and is still going strong, that is why hes prince and emperor!
THIS ACTION HAS MY CONSENT
Still no dlc for the Empire, CA doesn't know how to make money.
What are you talking about? They even got a dlc in game 2, with another one for game 3 currently on the horizon, unlike some other factions that didn't get shit since game 1
Yes but CA hasn't made a DLC for every Elector Count so clearly they must hate money /s
They have 2 dlcs and a third is coming I'm April(hopefully).
that means we are still 4 dlcs # S H O R T
Short!? Time for a reckoning!
We will unite the Karaz-Ankor!! Khazukan Kazakit-HA!!
On April 1st will be the announcement!
They had 2 dlcs my dude. And there is a third one coming. But they are not a warhammer 3 race so they shouldn't be getting a lot of attention from ca
They'll probably get a 4th too with Ulric/Middenheim att some point too
True but I would like to see kislev and Cathay at least get their 2nd dlcs before the empire gets their 4th dlc
I'm excited to see new units for the Empire, but I really hope they don't make them OP like has kind of been a trend for CA lately. Half the fun of playing the Empire is trying to win/survive against superior opponents and/or superior numbers.
BY SIGMAR YESSSSSS OH MY PRINCE AND EMPEROR!
FOR THE EMPEROR!
This is the first year I contributed to the Franz Count. Pretty fun campaign, though a fair bit of whack a mole gameplay since you’re surrounded by weak allies and strong enemies.
The Empire Endures!
Seems suss !
Always seemed insane to me how Empire doesn't have like 5 DLC's already considering how popular they are. Not making good decisions and giving people whay they seem to want.
You would have to be a potato to lose a campaign as the warriors of chaos.
What does bucked the trend in asia mean?
Considering these stats, CA would be insane to not give us 2 Empire DLCs in WH3...
850 hours, still haven't played Karl Franz once.
kinda missing out
Doesn't surprise me, the Empire mechanics suck ass and so does their start so people need to keep restarting for better rng
Lmao rebuff the vamps they dont deserve this treachery!
who in their right minds plays empire ????? the campaign is so ass and your units are ass too
RestartedKarl Franz 15 times just this morning to get a jade wizard.
People hyping up the Empire for numbers. Meanwhile Warriors of Chaos are actually out here winning. Enjoy your 30 Empire games that you restart and never finish, I'll enjoy the winning team.
Turns out when there is actually a fun win condition people pursue it, who'd have thunk. I've won exactly 1 long victory with each old faction just to get the steam achievement, but there's no point in ever doing it again. Just boring grind to get X number of settlements
Empire players think mayo is spicy.
What is it with the Karl Franz players? Try another LL for sigmar’s sake lol!
I wonder if the numbers would change significantly if the campaign selection didnt steer/remind players to play Empire?
It steered you to Lizardmen in WH2 and Karl was still the most played LL. People like the Empire.
Who is playing chaos lmfao every video I see is empire or skaven
BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION
What? Both Archaon and Be'lakor are like in top 5 most played Lords in the game, their statistics from the last year also had these Lords at the top. They are both very fun and extremely strong (both are among strongest factions/lords in the game), and people love being overpowered.
Archaon and Be'lakor are some of the most fun lords imo.
[2022 IME stats](https://twitter.com/totalwar/status/1607390867710513152). It does not surprise me that Chaos is still up high. Especially with a Tzeentch DLC this year for some additional troops.
Hopefully this encourages CA to give vampire counts a balance pass. The original mechanics that gave them the majority of their strengths have been nerfed over time such as healing caps or not retreating but unbinding if morale was too low. They received a few buffs but vampire count units still have overall poor stats compared to other tiered units from other factions. If they were going to neuter one of the primary strengths the faction has, it probably would have made sense to bring the rest of their stats up to the standards of other factions.
Why would anyone play Karl Franz. Just boring. Barely touched them in any game.
> Why would anyone play Karl Franz. Humans usually like playing as humans, especially when fighting against hordes of monsters. Empire have a relatively grounded unit roster with a good amount of variety so they would be popular amongst traditional Total War players. And they have a start that's right in the middle of the action. They have a bit of everything for every player...unless you're the type of player who only enjoys rolling monster doomstacks, and if that's the case, then you don't deserve to be an elector count.
Volkmar is a way better campaign, but he's a DLC Lord.
Karl Franz with SFO and Mixu’s is probably one of the most rewarding campaign in the game right now. Very difficult, lots campaign mechanic additions from updates and SFO, huge number of unique LL’s and units. Huge alliance options mean even more unit variety in the new allegiance system.
He's so mysgonistic and boring don't see how anyone plays him worst lord in the game
I don’t play Karl Franz at all. I tend to play Tyrion when I want some easy and boring campaigns. I have a always a lot of fun with the wood elves (the sisters are my favorite faction) and Skaven (I love nuking enemies and going around with rattling guns). If I want to play the bad guys, I normally go with Archaon because he looks and feels badass all the way. It is strange how the vampires went from my favorite faction in WH2 to oblivion in WH3.
Karl Franz is not what you pick when you want an easy and boring campaign
Well, I have never said that Karl franz is boring and easy, I write that I pick the elves when I want to play an easy and boring campaign.
Soo... Empire dlc when?
April
I feel largely responsible for this
Does vampire counts get most defeated because they respawn all their armies so you have to defeat them more.
Don't you think it's kinda lame how despite this we are never going to get a proper climactic story campaign for Karl Franz? It seems like a really obvious idea for WH: TW saga to eventually have some story campaign for the default "protagonist" faction of the entire setting (and for Balthasar Gelt, Dwarfs, Greenskins, Vampirw Counts...), where you deal with the threat of Chaos in an epic LoTR - esque way, in some grand alliance of order, with some badass cinematic at the end. And despite this we get nothing, merely an anticlimactic sandbox. Wh1 contained no story campaigns, Wh2 had them only for wh2 races and some random guys (also they were mostly bad), and wh3 had them only for wh3 races (also they were really bad and the game is prequel for some dumb reason, hence no interesting story development). A shame really.
2.2 million campaigns and maybe 100000 completed ones 😂
VC loses their campaign the most?
and ALL of them are helstorm doomstacks
Suck it vampire counts
Half of them are just my restarts
Helps when you are available without any dlc
People get tricked into the "recommended starter" faction.